Beyond Open Access: Open Source Scientific Software

This article points out that the open access debate has to go further into opening up scientific software.

Computers need software, and some of that software will be specially written or adapted from existing code to meet the particular needs of the scientists’ work. This makes computer software a vital component of the scientific process. It also means that being able to check that code for errors is as important as being able to check the rest of the experiment’s methodology. And yet very rarely can other scientists do that, because the code employed is not made available.

Priority Initiative “Digital Information” by the Alliance of German Science Organisations

Priority Initiative "Digital Information" by the Alliance of German Science Organisations

The Alliance of German Science Organisations have agreed to coordinate their activities and to expand on the ideal of the innovative information environment by means of a Joint Priority Initiative from 2008 to 2012. Guiding Principles as pdf download available.

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Posted: May 8, 2012
Tags: Alliance of German Science Organisations Digital Information open data

Five suggestions for Open Science evangelist: A historical IT perspective on how to put science raw-data acquisition on auto-pilot

Here is a piece by Robert Reddick.

This week I attended the @boraz lecture at UNC-Charlotte, and the debate-topic of Open Science was in the air. After some thought, and an email composition to Bora, I decided I would add to the public debate. First off, while I’m hardly even a citizen-scientist – my goal here is to offer, as best I can, a software-industry perspective on the important mission of Open Science.

The case for open computer programs

Ince, D.C., Hatton, L., Graham-Cumming, J. (2012). The case for open computer programs. Nature 482, 485–488.

Comprehensive nature article on open computer programs in science. From the abstract:

Scientific communication relies on evidence that cannot be entirely included in publications, but the rise of computational science has added a new layer of inaccessibility. Although it is now accepted that data should be made available on request, the current regulations regarding the availability of software are inconsistent. We argue that, with some exceptions, anything less than the release of source programs is intolerable for results that depend on computation.